This summer I'm going to be taking a break from campaigning for Tibetan Independence to follow 11 men kicking a leather sack around a German field. No, not the World Cup (Wayne Rooney can stick his broken foot where the sun don't shine for all I care), but the Fifi Wild Cup, featuring Tibet, Greenland, Zanzibar and other national sides not recognised by Fifa, football's governing body.

The tournament runs from today until the 3rd of June, and while Tibet isn't the favourite, at least they've made it to Germany - the French government refused to grant the Tibetan team visas in 1998. More on the FIFI world cup here or find out about host club FC St Pauli (nicknamed "The Anarchists") here.

Team Tibet's manager talks to the Tibetan news service Phayul here.

Amnesty International has joined a growing number of NGOs condemning internet censorship by regimes such as China and the multinational companies that provide their tools of repression. The irrepressible.info campaign launched today in The Observer newspaper calls for people to sign a pledge supporting the use of internet as "a force for political freedom, not repression."

It is excellent to have Amnesty supporting a global campaign that already includes Reporters Without Borders and the OpenNet Initiative. If you are reading this, you probably know about SFT's noluv4google.com campaign already. What is interesting about the internet freedom movement is how different campaign groups can work towards the same goals from loads of different angles. SFT's grassroots approach and iternational network meant that it could respond with a demonstration on the ground at google HQ in California within hours of the launch of google's censored site google.cn in a way that other NGOs couldn't do. Sure, give AI two quid a month, but for me its all about being an active member of the SFT network, and campaigning in the streets.

(Donate to Students for a Free Tibet UK here!)

We are pleased to welcome you to the new, Tibet-friendly, SFT UK blog! Our old blog (sftuk.blogspot.com) was hosted by Google. After the launch of the self-censored Google.cn in China we had to move. Please update your links.

We believe Google should not have bowed to the Chinese Government's demands and created a search engine that aids propaganda in China. Searches are censored when related to controversial topics such as Tibet, Taiwan independence, and Falun Gong. Compare the searches for yourself at the cool OpenNet Initiative comparison tool. Play around with it, some sites are de-listed, that is they effectively don’t exist in China, these include Human Rights Watch and the BBC news site. Other keywords are censored especially those related to political concepts and Chinese history.

Noluv4google.com is SFT’s campaign website with Google search, email and blog alternatives.

May 16th 1966 marked the start of the Cultural Revolution, what would become one of the darkest and most destructive periods in the history of China and Tibet.

It began as a purge of Chinese Communist Party leaders by Chairman Mao Tse-Tung, but it quickly spiraled out of control into a mass denunciation of many of China’s leaders and academics and the rejection of everything associated with the past. Chinese youths in particular, under the guise of the Red Guard, took it upon themselves to punish officials and intellectuals they deemed to be opposed to the work of Mao and to physically destroy most of China’s historical and religious buildings.

In Tibet, the Cultural Revolution had appaling consequences. Across the country hundreds of thousands of Buddhist monks were forced to disrobe or were killed and more than 6000 monasteries were destroyed. Religious statues were melted down and the gold shipped to China for government use and sacred texts were burned. In a country where religion, culture and politics are intertwined, the loss of the monasteries also meant the loss of libraries that held centuries of learning, philosophy, poetry and art and it meant a loss of cultural centres and the focal point of communities across Tibet. The loss of human life during that period is unimagineable.

What little has been done to undo the damage of the Cultural Revlution in Tibet is mainly through the work of Tibetans themselves. To this day the Chinese government remains unaccountable for the killing and destruction that happened in the decade following 1966, their paltry attempts to restore Tibetan culture have mainly been gaudy stereotypes for the benefit of tourists. Even now public debate on the Cultural Revolution is banned, the government satisfied to just sweep it under the carpet.

But sadly, the atrocities of the Cultural Revolution are not confined to the past. Today Tibetans are still being arrested and tortured for practicing their culture and beliefs or for speaking out against the occupation. So today we remember those who suffered during the Cultural Revolution and those who suffer still.